The story behind forever changing massive Portsmouth mural depicting local life in incredible detail

We met the Portsmouth artist who claims to have had a longer career than Banksy and to boast the only forever changing mural in the world which has a pride of place in Southsea.

Having no qualifications, Mark Lewis didn’t get into art college, but jokes, “I thought I'd become Portsmouth's most famous artist instead.”

Mark, director of artandsoultraders.com, said: “I was always good at art at school, it was my best subject. I was a bit of a rebel. I started graffitiing, spray can art when I was 13, 14. I think I got arrested when I was 14 for spraying a subway up in Waterlooville a day after it opened and then, ironically, 20 years later I got paid by the local council to paint it up properly with a local youth centre. And it's still there now, looking great and not been touched or graffitied.

“In 1990 I started the business of painting satellite dishes as they started appearing everywhere and everyone started complaining about them, that they looked ugly on the houses. So as I was a muralist artist anyway, it was obvious to me any white canvas in the streets was up for painting so I started designing them.

“The first one in Waterlooville, Paul and Angie's house, London Road, painted a smiley face on that and had such great reception, I just carried on doing them for other people. Then appeared in the local news and then in European magazines, Sky TV, Teletext so basically I was the first person in the world to paint satellite dishes as a business and I met Prince Charles, Lady Diana.”

One of Mark’s biggest projects is the map mural of Portsmouth which can be found in Clarendon Road to which he comes back to every summer to add more people and businesses.

He said: “Well, any visitors or locals, when you come to this mural, you're witnessing and experience an interactive painted mural where you can not only look at it and guide yourself around the city with it, but also it's got local residents on there. It's got hundreds of stories on there, very personal ones, all interesting. It's got local family and independent run businesses. It's got historical interest in their characters and stories.

As far as I know, and I've looked all over the internet, no one's ever done this before and this is what I pride myself on and enjoy most is coming up with unique, novel, original ideas and running with them until other people start copying them then I move on and I come up with another one. It's great. I'm waiting for more people to come along and come up with some crazy ideas.”

You can keep up to date with Mark’s art via his Instagram page here.